What's Happened To The Roses?

When I was a child many moons ago, I remember visiting friends and relatives and on entering their gardens the strong smell of roses use to hit you and bring such pleasure I can still remember it to this day.
Today, even though there are plenty of roses in peoples gardens you just don't get that lovely smell like you use to...to be honest, if you walked down the street with your eyes shut you'd be hard pressed to know if you'd passed any roses on your walk as none have a scent like I remember as a child....what's happened to roses?

 

There are still many roses that have splendid perfumes but not in the modern HT type I think. David Austin specialises in old fashioned type roses where the loveliness of their perfume is essential.
Also sadly, as we get older, our sense of smell and our ability to see colours lessens. We have a rose expert on here called wiseowl who will tell you more,
Jenny namaste

 

I know what you mean, which is why when I bought lots of Roses last year I specifically chose ones which had a strong fragrance, including 7 David Austin Roses (and another on the way).

There are still lots of fragrant Roses out there, you just need to do a bit of research beforehand

 

But don't you find that even the scented roses sold today are nowhere near as scented as the really old fashioned ones from years ago.

 

I'm afraid this might not be limited to roses

Think back to your childhood. How colourful everything was, how you could smell and feel the weather, and how everything had an interesting shape.

We become less sensitive to everything as we get older. It might be our senses diminishing, but I don't think it is. I think its just that what was once new and exciting has now been experienced so many times we simply notice everything less.

 

I think we don't actually stop long enough to take in the scents,always things to do...but i make an extra effort these days to make sure i do....i've had a good few sessions of wandering around the garden and litterally 'stopping to smell the Roses' and many other plants for that matter...it's suprising all these years and i didn't realise how lovely Verbena smells and others

 

The vast majority of roses have been bred for their looks nowadays ........
There are still fragrant roses out there.... You just have to search more .......

 

Maybe this is it. I'm off work at the moment. Yesterday I took the lad down the beach. Only instead of going for a walk or having some plan, we just stopped there. He built sand castles and I helped. We were there for 2 hours and for the first time in ages, I started to notice the smell of the salty air and decomposing seaweed. Maybe that's the answer. Maybe from time to time we just have to pause for a minute.

 

I find as I get older I'm taking much more pleasure from the simple things in life

 

Nothing wrong with being simple WOO although I'm sure you're just being modest

 

I have a thirty year old rose "Buff Beauty" which fills the garden with scent at this time of the year. I buy my roses from Peter Beales in Norfolk and in the current catalogue the roses are rated 1 to 10 for scent.
I have a vase full of golden dawn roses in my kitchen and the scent is glorious. There were so many blooms on the bush I couldn't resist snipping a few.